David Zucker, producer of Scary Movie 4, turned out this little bombshell for GOP use in the final days running up to the 2006 election.

All those big brains who have brought Republican prospects to their current point of success thought Mr. Zucker’s ad was “too extreme,” “way over the top.”

So he just gave it to Matt Drudge.

video

One key way in which this blog differs from the typical conservative blog is a reflection of the management’s point of view on MSM-cum-blogospheric feeding frenzies. They are public exercises in stupidity, which, at some point in the proceedings, I would really prefer simply to ignore.

There is good reason to suspect that the Foleygate brouhaha really amounts to a pre-election touchdown play by a very skilled democrat dirty tricks team, enabled by some behind-the-scenes coaching by radical Gay activists. Gateway Pundit is providing a program identifying some of the principals.

It’s looking ugly right now. The democrats made this Republican Congress look stupid, incompetent, corrupt, and undeserving of its House and Senate majorities, most of which is not really all that much of a feat. But you do have to admire the enemy’s skill and organization.

I could almost entertain the idea that it might be better to turn over the job of wiping out Islamic terrorists to the more competent, more perceptive, and far more ruthless party. But unfortunately, as we all know, democrat competence, clear-sightedness, and ruthlessness stops at the water’s edge. Too much of that party’s base is made up of thoroughly committed enemies of America, from Beverly Hills to Beijing, for there to be any possibility on its part of effectiveness at managing a war. Après Charlie Rangel, it will be le deluge.

What consoles me, as the conniving and slippery dems hand Denny Hastert his head, is the reflection that I’ve seen all this before.

When I was in college, back during the Consulate of Plancus, I was active in many political organizations. One of my personal favorites was an absurd activity called the Connecticut Intercollegiate State Legislature (CISL, pronounced “Cecil”). This organization had student delegations from most colleges and universities all over the state, and its entire raison d’être consisted of organizing and arranging a one day mock legislative session in the actual house and senate chambers in the State Capitol in Hartford. CISL’s real function was social. In the days before coeducation, the opportunity for students from for male-only schools, like Yale, to meet girls was invaluable.

Yale obviously had a edge with respect to talent and leadership, and the Yale CISL Delegation had a long and illustrious tradition of domination through pure Machiavellianism. Since CISL was intrinsically meaningless, ideology was irrelevant. It was simply a matter of Yale contra Mundum.

Although conservatives from my own extreme right-wing student society (the Party of the Right) ran the Yale CISL Delegation up until the mid-1960s, conservatives at that point (distracted by their own internal conflicts between libertarians and traditionalists) cheerfully turned CISL over to the liberals. Yale liberals did a fine job of running CISL. In essence, the manipulative, dishonest, and unprincipled way Yale always ran CISL really accorded better with the standard liberal political métier.

Eventually, though, Yale’s evil ways caught up with us. After a few decades of absolute domination by wily and unprincipled Yale delegations, the whole organization wised up. Everyone knew Yale was crooked, and most other schools had memorized the Yale playbook. Everyone was doing double-dealing and dirty tricks, and the entire rest of the organization was united en bloc, determined to end Yale’s tyranny.

It was a sticky situation, I can tell you, and I had a tough time retrieving Yale’s fortunes, faced with such a newly competent and thoroughly-united alliance of adversaries, but all that is of small interest now.

The point of all this is the simple observation that, if even clueless and provincial rubes from bad state schools can eventually catch on to the razzle-dazzle tactics of their betters, there may be hope for even Congressional Republicans. Nothing goes on forever. Eventually those underdogs you’ve been trampling into the mud will get tired of being walked over (despite being in the majority). Even people like Bill Frist and Denny Hastert get tired of big, bad democrats swaggering over, and kicking sand in their faces. One fine day, the Republicans are going to mail away for that Charles Atlas brochure, and start studying the democrat playbook.

What you do right now, just for instance, is a two-direction maneuver. You kill the news meme, by doing something important overseas: invade Waziristan and catch Osama, declare war on another outlaw country, or just blow up an aspirin plant in Somalia. Meanwhile, you make the democrats pay by taking the anti-Gay momentum of Foleygate, and running with it. How about investigating Barney Frank? Time to introduce a few measures, like the Defense of Marriage Amendment, which will make them sorry they started all this.

Former Congressman (as she preferred to be titled) Helen Chenoweth-Hage died today in a one-car crash near Tonopah, Nev., 172 miles northwest of Las Vegas. She was 68.

Helen Chenoweth-Hage was born in Topeka, Kansas, grew up in Grant’s Pass, Oregon, and attended Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington. She married Nick Chenoweth of Orofino, Idaho in 1958. They had two children, and divorced in 1975. From 1975-1977, she was Executive Director of the Republican Party in Idaho. She was subsequently chief of staff and campaign manager for Steve Symms.

In 1994, she ran for Congress for the Idaho First District, pledging to occupy the office for no more than three terms. She defeated a two-term incumbent in a colorful campaign which saw Chenoweth hosting “endangered salmon bakes.”

She was an arch libertarian, and ranked as one of the most conservative members of Congress. I remember her with affection.

She was a defender of militia movements, and frequently attacked over-militarization of federal law enforcement. One can perceive just how sound she was by reading this commie attack piece identifying her as a “Poster Child of the Militia.”

She was a severe critic of William Jefferson Clinton, and was one of the first to call for his resignation. In return, her own private life was attacked by a sleazy Pacific Northwest leftist in a shameful hit piece in Salon.

In 1997, she introduced H. J. Res 83 in the 103rd Congress, a new version of the famous Bricker Bill attempting to place restrictions on treaties and executive agreements entered into by the United States. Unfortunately, that Congress neglected to pass this highly desirable measure.

Faithful to her word, despite being re-elected by comfortable margins, Helen Chenoweth declined to run for Congress again after her third term.

In today’s automobile accident, Helen Chenoweth-Hage was a passenger in the car driven by her daughter-in-law, and was holding her infant grandson in her lap. She was thrown from the car, but succeeded in protecting the infant while suffering fatal injuries herself.

Clarice Feldman, at American Thinker, identifies some interesting background to the recent Rep. Mark Foley improper emails story.

1) The same emails were given to the St. Petersburg Times last November. The paper did not run a story.

2) The Foley story was hinted at Monday 9/18 on a new, and highly inactive, blog purportedly created 7/28 to Stop Sex Predators. Its management is unidentified, and in six weeks of previous operation it had produced 7 posts, all minor research papers on ancient history.

This blog dropped the bomb on Congressman Foley last Sunday, publishing 4 emails evidencing suspicious interest in, and overly-cordial expressions of good will towards, a 16 year old page.

3) On Thursday, 9/28, an ABC news blog took up the story, noting that Rep. Foley’s democrat opponent Tim Mahoney was calling for an investigation. The same day, another party contacted ABC with more explicit emails. Foley resigned 9/29.

4) Brian Ross, an ABC reporter with an interesting record of leftish partisanship (early source for Rush Limbaugh arrest, Russell Tines leak), took up the Foley story armed with some new IM correspondence.

5) CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), a Soros-funded leftwing political litigation group, has jumped on board, calling for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the House Republican Leadership in connection with the Foley scandal.

Clarice Feldman thus demonstrates that the demise of Rep. Foley is no accident. The whole thing is another cleverly conceived, professionally-executed partisan operation, aimed at gaining at least one House seat, and damaging House Republicans as much as possible, on the basis of a planted story scheduled to break just weeks before the November elections.

Winchester Model 1897 trench gun

The Bush Administration has been widely criticized for the allegedly unprecedented policy of interpreting the definitions of portions of the Geneva Conventions. And Senators McCain, Graham, and Warner recently waged a very public battle in the Senate specifically to ensure “that there be no attempt to redefine U.S. obligations.”

Bush Administration opponents are mistaken. There is a very prominent case of the United States refusing to accept the definition of treaty terms used by the enemy, and openly defying world opinion.

In WWI, the US military issued Winchester Model 1897 slide-action shotguns to US troops, along with buckshot-loaded cartridges. Each 12 gauge round contained nine size 00 buckshot. The shotguns featured a bayonet lug, and a perforated metal cover to protect the hand from the barrel becoming over-heated by rapid fire.

The shotguns were found to be desirable weapons, very useful for clearing trenches and in close combat. They were particularly popular with the Marines, who put them to conspicuously good use in Belleau Wood.

Germany, in 1918, protested US use of shotguns firing multiple projectile buckshot ammunition as a violation of Section II of the 1907 Hague Convention (the Geneva Convention’s predecessor treaty), which forbade belligerents to employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.

But, as W. Hays Parks, Special Assistant for Law of War Matters, Office of The Judge Advocate General, U.S. Army, notes in a 1997 paper, DA-PAM 27-50-299, the United States interpreted the Hague Treaty differently, rejecting the German protest.

The highly-effective use of the shotgun by United States forces had a telling effect on the morale of front-line German troops. On 19 September 1918, the German government issued a diplomatic protest against the American use of shotguns, alleging that the shotgun was prohibited by the law of war.

After careful consideration and review of the applicable law by The Judge Advocate General of the Army, Secretary of State Robert Lansing rejected the German protest in a formal note.

Threats to punish captured American soldiers found armed with shotguns met the stern US warning that any unjustified measures taken against US prisoners of war would be retaliated in equal measure upon captured Germans.

The reality is that international agreements of this kind invariably include substantial quantities of broad and unspecific statement, inevitably requiring interpretation. Someone has to decide whether 00 buckshot constitutes the kind of projectile “calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.” Someone has to decide today whether keeping someone in a cold room, or subjecting someone to “water-boarding,” constitutes torture.

What is remarkable is that, in the old days, Germany would argue for definitions which were in Germany’s interest, and United States officials would argue for interpretations which were in the interest of the United States. Today, our leading media outlets, a substantial portion of the body of active participants in policy debate, the former Secretary of State, and even three prominent Republican senators are found shouting their heads off in the public square, demanding that the United States adopt interpretations as inconvenient to US interests as possible.

Some of us find all this more than a little grotesque.

As the GOP faces losing the House (and conceivably also the Senate) two months from now in November, Newt Gingrich, the architect of the Contract With America, which won Republican control of Congress in 1994 for the first time in 40 years, thinks Republicans can win, if they will just run on the issues the American people want addressed.

Newt’s points:

(1) Make English the Official Language of Government. The House should pass a bill making English the official language of government, abolishing multilingual ballots and reaffirming that new citizens should be required to pass a test on American history in English. The Rasmussen poll reported that support for English as the official language was 85%. The Zogby poll had it at 84%. Why do Republican leaders find it so hard to side with more than four out of every five Americans? How many liberal Democrats who currently assume they are unbeatable would suddenly have a hard time explaining a series of votes against English to their constituents? Remember, at 85%, there are no anti-English congressional districts no matter what the elite media says.

(2) Control the Borders. The House should pass a narrowly focused bill to ensure that the United States can control the border. The current Senate bill is a disaster. It is impossible to pass a “comprehensive” immigration bill in the next two months. The American people overwhelmingly want the borders controlled and every act of terrorism reminds us that having the borders uncontrolled makes us more vulnerable to attack. The House should immediately pass a border-control bill and conservative Republican senators should move every day to bring it up in the Senate. Let Democrats and elitist Republicans block controlling the border and make that a referendum test for Election Day.

(3) Keep God in the Pledge. Congress should take two steps to preserve the right to say “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, a right which is supported by 91% of all Americans. The American people feel deeply that our Declaration of Independence is correct in saying that each of us is endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. Beginning with the Supreme Court’s 1963 decision outlawing school prayer, the courts have waged a 43-year assault on the core values of American liberty. It is time to return to a balanced Constitutional system. There is no Constitutional case for five lawyers’ on the court being a floating majority for a permanent Constitutional Convention.

The American people would rally to the elected branches’ taking steps to rebalance the Constitution. First, the House should pass a bill suspending the recent federal district court decision in California outlawing the words “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Second, the House should pass a law blocking the Supreme Court from reviewing the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance (a power of the Congress expressly granted in the Constitution).

(4) Require a Voter ID Card. The American people overwhelmingly support (85% in one poll) having a voter id card so we can be sure only legal citizens are voting. Passing a bill to require this in all federal elections would be a big step toward more honest elections.

(5) Repeal the Death Tax, for Good. The American people have consistently supported the total repeal of the death tax and the House should simply pass it once a week and attach it to various Senate bills to force the Senate to deal with it again and again. Let liberals explain why they oppose something that more than 70% of the country favors.

(6) Restore Property Rights. The American people are deeply opposed to local politicians’ being able to seize a citizen’s home or business. The Supreme Court’s Kelo decision on eminent domain is one of the most unpopular in recent years and is also one of the most dangerous. Anyone who knows the history of local government corruption in America knows it will not be long before some corrupt developers engage some corrupt politicians and this power is exploited at the cost of most Americans. Members of the Black Caucus have been among the most vocal in pointing out that it is poor people who will be the most victimized so rich developers and greedy politicians can make the money off their homes and businesses. The House should pass a powerful bill returning the constitutional law to the pre-Kelo rules and blocking the Supreme Court from reviewing it.

(7) Achieve Sustainable Energy Independence. The country is eager for a straightforward new energy strategy for national security, environmental and economic reasons. The combination of $3 gasoline, watching Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Russia get more of our money, and concerns about the environment come together to require real change. The House should meet that need. Starting with Rep. Jim Nussle’s (R-Iowa) bill on renewable fuels, adding to it clean nuclear power using new technologies that are safe and produce little waste, developing more clean coal solutions, investing in a conversion to a hydrogen economy, incentivizing conservation, providing tax credits so the auto industry can invest in the new technology and new manufacturing equipment needed to produce revolutionary new vehicles, creating the tax incentives to build the distribution system for biofuels, hybrids, and hydrogen, providing deeper tax incentives for radically better cars (imagine a substantial tax credit for cars exceeding 200 miles to the gallon of petroleum through a combination of E-85 or biodiesel, hybrid use of electricity and hydrogen), and a bill to create state flexibility in exploring off shore with a 50% split in revenue so state legislatures and governors would have an incentive to develop environmentally sound methods of exploration and production.

(8) Control Spending and Balance the Budget. The House should pass new budget legislation to control spending, leading to a balanced budget in seven years (the length of time we gave ourselves in the Contract with America and which led to the first four balanced budgets since the 1920s), with special focus on programs liberals will fight to increase spending. Let the country see who is really committed to smaller government with lower taxes and who is committed to bigger government with higher taxes.

(9) Tie Education Funding to Teacher Accountability. A major result of the No Child Left Behind legislation has been the clear revelation that a number of schools systems are crippling and destroying children. When the Detroit school system only graduates 21% of entering freshman on time, it is clear the children are being cheated. The American people strongly support reforms designed to save the children. The first step would be to insist that federal funds only go to school systems which require teacher competency and accountability. A clear choice between those who want to save the children and those who want to save the bureaucrats would mobilize the country in favor of dramatic education reform.

(10) Defend America From the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam. Terrorism is a real threat. Congress should hold hearings on the recent terrorist activities in Canada, the U.K. and Morocco. The House should move bills that strengthen our security from terrorists with increased powers for surveillance, an overruling of the disastrous Hamdan decision and a series of other steps.

(11) Focus on Iran and North Korea. The American people are very prepared to believe we face extraordinary threats from a nuclear North Korea and an Iranian regime actively seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Any actions in Iraq need to be recast in terms of their impact on Iran. A weak America in Iraq will be unable to stop Iran. Stopping Iran is potentially literally a matter of life and death. Congress should hold hearings on the scale of the Iranian and North Korean threat, the statements of their key leaders and the requirements for action to replace these dictatorships before they succeed in killing millions of Americans. The Santorum Iranian democracy bill should be forced out of the Senate in the context of these threats. Everything about Iraq should be debated within this larger and much more dangerous context.

The first three are gestures in the direction of the part of the Right that I don’t belong to, but none of them represent a price I, and my kind of Republicans, would be unwilling to pay to keep the coalition together.

Newt’s list may not be genius, but it is kind of close. He has managed to identify a package of issues which have serious voter appeal, and which would put the democrats right back on the defensive. If Congressional Republicans had any brains (a highly dubious proposition, judging by their performance recently), they would announce that they are embracing this 11 Point Plan from the Capitol steps tomorrow morning.

Paul Bedard, in US News, reports that the results of a Republican National Committee survey indicate that Republican voters are every bit as mobilized as the moonbat left.

81% of Republicans say they are “almost certain” to vote this coming November, and another 14% say they are “very likely” to vote.

93% of Republicans have “extremely strong feelings” on issues related to the War on Terror.

96% of Republians have “extremely strong feelings” on domestic issues including taxes, cultural values, and health care issues.

Republicans support President Bush by an 88-11 margin. And, faced with the democrat alternative, Republican voters support even this Republican Congress by an 84-6 margin.

A college classmate this morning sent me a link to Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne‘s somewhat premature attempt at dancing on American Conservatism’s grave.

Dionne is not entirely wrong, of course. He notes correctly that George W. Bush never was a real conservative in the Goldwater, Reagan, or Gingrich sense. But, personally, I wouldn’t waste my time constructing elaborate theories about Hamiltonian “big-government conservatism,” or using “government as a means to achieve conservative ends.” It’s really much simpler than that. George W. Bush is simply an old-fashioned garden variety practical politician (what we used to call an Eisenhower Republican), bringing to his Presidency his family’s traditional flexibility in governing, flavored with just enough red-state populism and Republican impulses to secure the GOP base’s support.

The American left has remained mobilized and afflicted with a paranoid sense of wrong ever since their favorite son’s sexual scandals metastasized into perjury and impeachment. Disappointment with the outcome of the 2000 election and US military actions following 9/11 have continued to keep the left as angry and active as a nest of red ants thoroughly poked with a stick. The larger part of George W. Bush’s perceived conservatism really amounts to mere reciprocated animosity.

Dionne is not inaccurate in describing this Congress.

The most obvious, outrageous and unprincipled spasm occurred last night when the Senate voted on a bill that would have simultaneously raised the minimum wage and slashed taxes on inherited wealth.

Rarely has our system produced a more naked exercise in opportunism than this measure. Most conservatives oppose the minimum wage on principle as a form of government meddling in the marketplace. But moderate Republicans in jeopardy this fall desperately wanted an increase in the minimum wage.

The Republican Senatorial majority unfortunately includes a number of liberal Republican-in-name-only senators, and has been effectively paralysed by joys-of-incumbency induced timidity and the democrats’ willingness to abuse the filibuster.

Dionne contends that the repeal of the death tax failed “because there is nothing close to a conservative majority in the United States.” Rubbish! There certainly is a majority in this country in favor of not taxing away a family’s assets simply because someone has died.

Poll after poll proves it.

a 1999 poll by Worthlin Worldwide found 70 percent of voters favoring a phase-out of the estate tax. — A 2000 poll by the Pew Research Center found 71 percent of voters supporting elimination of the inheritance tax. — A 2001 CBS News/New York Times poll also found 71 percent of people opposing imposition of an estate tax at death.

Dionne would like to believe that libertarian versus traditionalist divisions are in the process of splitting the right on issues like immigration and stem cell research. Sorry, Mr. Dionne. It’s true that I disagree strongly with Michelle Malkin and Victor Davis Hanson about immigration, but our differences do not materially diminish my admiration and respect for those two traditionalists, nor are they likely to persuade Michelle, Victor, or myself to start voting for democrats. I don’t have a problem with stem cell research myself (being irreligious), but I believe President Bush was quite right to veto spending the tax dollars of religious people funding things they find morally repugnant. Let’s just finance this kind of research privately. There’s no shortage of rich atheists or leftists.

Dionne is off-base looking for a conservative split over religious issues these days. I’ve had plenty of differences within the Conservative Movement with religious traditionalists in days gone by, but there is no particular Religious Right agenda we libertarians have a major problem with today. I do have problems with organs of the left, like the ACLU, waging intolerant campaigns to eradicate any form of private religious expression in the public space, eliminating religious symbols, or persecuting the Boy Scouts for political incorrectness. In short, I expect most of us making up what Dionne calls the “big-business right and culturally optimistic conservatives” are likely to continue to vote with the ordinary hometown Americans rather than with the coastal community of fashion indefinitely on into the misty future.

He’s right in saying this Congress is a disaster, and many of its members deserve to be defeated. I’ve said the same thing repeatedly myself. But what will lose in November will not be conservative principles, but the exact opposite. The losers will be the unprincipled, the compromisers and trimmers, and the opportunists.

The Conservative Movement, Mr. Dionne, has experienced setbacks and electoral defeats before. Those of us who lived through the Goldwater campaign of 1964 are not especially perturbed by the prospect of this coming November. We will be back.

———————
Hat tip to Steve Wagenseil.

Karl Rove, in a NH interview quoted by Raw Story, opines that the rise of the Blogoshpere has proven a much more useful and positive development for Republicans than it has for democrats.

I do also think that the Internet has proven to be a more powerful tool on our side than it has been for the other side. It has proven to be a tool on our side to sort of unite Conservatives and have a healthy intra-movement dialogue. But it’s essentially been something that has helped us gain in influence and broaden our appeal. Among Democrats, my sense is that the blog world has tended to strengthen the far Left of the Democratic Party at the expense of liberal, but somewhat less liberal, members of their party. It has tended to sort of drive their party even further to the Left rather than focusing on good ideas that would help unite people around common goals and common purposes. Instead, the Internet for the Left of the Democratic Party has served as a way to mobilize hate and anger — hate and anger, first and foremost, at this President and Conservatives, but then also at people within their own party whom they consider to be less than completely loyal to this very narrow, very out-of-the-mainstream, very far Left-wing ideology that they tend to represent.

The Wall Street Journal put the debate on the Death Tax (which costs more to collect than it adds to the Federal coffers).

Americans favor repealing the death tax not because they think it will help them directly. They’re more principled than that. Two-thirds of the public wants to repeal it because they think taxing a lifetime of thrift due to the accident of death is unfair, and even immoral. They also understand that the really rich won’t pay the tax anyway because they hire lawyers to avoid it.

For proof that they’re right, they need only watch the current debate. The superrich or their kin–such as Bill Gates Sr. and Warren Buffett–are some of the loudest voices opposing repeal. Yet they are able to shelter their own vast wealth by creating foundations or via other crafty estate planning. Edward McCaffery, an estate tax expert at USC Law School, argues that “if breaking up large concentrations of wealth is the intention of the death tax, then it is a miserable failure.”

Do the Kennedys or Rockefellers look any poorer from the existence of a tax first created in 1917? The real people who pay the levy are the thrifty middle class and entrepreneurs who’ve built up a modest nest egg or business and are hit by a 46% tax rate when they die. Americans want family businesses, ranches, farms and other assets to be passed from one generation to the next. Yet the U.S. has one of the highest death tax rates in the world.

But two Republican poltroons in the Senate joined the Party of Envy to defeat the repeal 57-41. A 60 vote majority was needed to end a democrat filibuster against basic decency.

Besides Mr. Baucus (D – Montana), three other Democrats voted to end debate and clear the way for a vote on repeal. They were Senator Ben E. Nelson of Nebraska, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and Senator Blanche L. Lincoln of Arkansas. Two Republicans, Senator George V. Voinovich of Ohio and Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, voted to block the bill.

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and was very much in favor of the redistribution of wealth.

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the addition of more government welfare programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school. Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was! taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn’t even have time for a boyfriend, and didn’t really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, “How is your friend Audrey doing?” She replied, “Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus, college for her is a blast. She’s always invited to all the parties, and lots of times she doesn’t even show up for classes because she’s too hung over.”

Her wise father asked his daughter, “Why don’t you go to the Dean’s office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.”

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father’s suggestion, angrily fired back, “That wouldn’t be fair! I have worked really hard for my grades! I’ve invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!” The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”

Digby admires a country western song. He thinks that “Gretchen Wilson and Merle Haggard’s song “Politically Uncorrect” perfectly captures the sense of exceptionalism and specialness of southern culture.”

I’m for the low man on the totem pole
And I’m for the underdog God bless his soul
And I’m for the guys still pulling third shift
And the single mom raisin’ her kids
I’m for the preachers who stay on their knees
And I’m for the sinner who finally believes
And I’m for the farmer with dirt on his hands
And the soldiers who fight for this land

Chorus:

And I’m for the Bible and I’m for the flag
And I’m for the working man, me and ol’ hag
I’m just one of many
Who can’t get no respect
Politically uncorrect

(Merle Haggard)
I guess my opinion is all out of style

(Gretchen Wilson)
Aw, but don’t get me started cause I can get riled
And I’ll make a fight for the forefathers plan

(Merle Haggard)
And the world already knows where I stand

Repeat Chorus

(Merle Haggard)
Nothing wrong with the Bible, nothing wrong with the flag

(Gretchen Wilson)
Nothing wrong with the working man me & ol’ hag
We’re just some of many who can’t get no respect
Politically uncorrect

And Digby wishes his own camp enjoyed an equivalently strong cultural identity:

The non-southern Party appears to exist mainly as a repository of opposition to conservative policies. Is that true?

Perhaps the big question is this: If you could write a country song about Blue State identity, what would the lyrics say?

That sounds like an invitation, doesn’t it?